Tag: Traveling with Kids

Ethiopians call foreigners faranji, which our local guide tells us means “French” in Amharic. In rural Southern Ethiopia, where cars are scarce and farmers walk their herds on the main roads, children run after the ten-year-old Toyota Land Cruisers carrying faranji and yell “Ayh-land-ah, Ayh-land-ah” or sometimes just “Ayh-land,” which is their name for the…

In the first five months of a ten-month trip around the world with my husband and kids, we’ve taken nineteen flights, nine train rides, eleven bus rides, and too many car rides to cover nearly 5000 miles to count. We’ve spent two weeks of these five months literally in transit. It’s never fun exactly, but…

Before we left the United States, I read many blogs of other traveling families who had taken similar trips, and they all described the incredible bonds developed on the road. “It was such a gift to spend so much time together!” “We returned feeling closer to each other than ever before.” And how the kids…

As I sat between the kids in the backseat of our rental car, parked on the main street of the Langa township in Cape Town, South Africa, and listened to the tour guide give his introductory talk on the history of the townships and their residents, I could feel the resentment steaming off of them.…

TOP TEN ELEVEN THINGS TO DO WITH KIDS! 1. Drive to the Cape of Good Hope via Chapman’s Peak. Take the cable car to the top of the mountain and feel the wind that makes this Cape so treacherous to sailors. Stop in one of the tidal pools along the way, which if you are…

Ethiopia is incredibly beautiful. We had no idea how beautiful it was, which made the country all the more appealing, because we felt as if we’d stumbled upon a secret. In the course of one or two days of driving, we passed through rolling green hills, mountain ranges, and dusty deserts.